


Wocka Wocka

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Childhood, Dark Magic, Magik: Storm and Illyana, Stuffed Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 05:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18004565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: The frightful fate of Fozzie Bear. (Or, Illyana gets to fix something instead of destroying it.)





	Wocka Wocka

Illyana sets the grimoire aside for the evening, her eyes swimming with eldritch spells and incantations. Belasco is away, dealing with someone called Ka-Zar, and she has once again been left to her own devices. 

The X-Men would never let her read these kinds of books, all bloody and dark and wicked. Belasco is evil, she knows this, knows he means to twist her and change her and destroy her, but a part of her thrills at every new spell she learns. Kitty— the real Kitty, from Earth, not the poor wretch Cat that Belasco twisted— knew computers well, the mechanics and math and science of them. 

This is like that, for Illyana. That’s how she thinks of it. The magic, dark as it may be, is to her what computers are to Kitty. The more she learns, the more capable she feels, the more she can do. 

Illyana slides the book back into its proper place on one of Belasco’s towering shelves and leaves the library, blowing out the candles she had lit. She is done reading for the day, but maybe she will try another spell before she goes to sleep— one of Ororo’s spells, not one of Belasco’s.  _ Good _ magic, creating rather than destructing. 

Belasco’s spells come so much easier to her, but she just knows that one day she’ll be able to perfect one of Ororo’s. All she has to do is keep practicing, she’s sure of it. 

As she crosses through Belasco’s throne room to get to her bedroom, she is startled by Cat and tries not to show it. 

Before Limbo, Kitty Pryde was her best friend. Cat was like her but not like her, an older, bitterer version of Kitty with catlike eyes and fangs, who once killed a tiger and ate it raw, right in front of Illyana. Kitty Pryde was her best friend. Cat was her best friend, too, in quite a different way, harsher and colder and sadder. 

This creature that comes at her now, though, is not really Kitty and is not really Cat. She is what Belasco made her— an instinct-driven, enslaved animal. Sometimes she catches rats and small demons and brings them to Belasco as presents. 

Right now, she’s holding something in her teeth, and it looks like she intends it for Illyana. 

“Shoo,” Illyana mumbles, tightening her hand into a fist, her fingernails digging into the flesh of her palm. “Shoo, Cat, go away.” When she could still speak, when she still had free will, Cat frightened her for her intensity. Now, she frightens Illyana with her docility. Cat is mindlessly obedient to Belasco, mindlessly fierce when commanded to be, mindlessly meek when that is what’s asked of her. There is nothing left of the woman who taught Illyana to defend herself.

Except in those instants when there  _ is _ . And that’s the worst part of all, really.

Cat drops what she’s carrying at Illyana’s feet, and at first Illyana doesn’t recognize it. When she does, she feels her heart clench. 

Fozzie Bear.

When Belasco first coaxed her into his domain, so many years ago, she’d been carrying the stuffed bear. While Belasco ranted and raved, captured her friends and bloviated about her grand destiny as the Darkchild, she’d kept a firm grasp on Fozzie Bear. When the X-Men—  _ her _ X-Men, not the strange and warped monster Kurt had turned into, not Wolverine’s decaying bones— showed up, and two Ororos plotted to escape Limbo, she’d kept a firm grasp on Fozzie Bear. 

Piotr swept her up into his arms, and still she’d held tightly to her bear. 

She hadn’t let go until Belasco was tugging on her by one arm and Kitty was tugging on the other. She’d dropped Fozzie Bear. While the X-Men escaped, he got left behind in Limbo. Just like her. 

She leans down and scoops up the bear. There’s a large rip right down Fozzie’s stomach, spilling cottony white fluff out of the abdomen. Whether Belasco or Cat did that, she doesn’t know. 

“Where… where did you find him? I mean,” she corrects herself, “ _ this _ , where did you find  _ this _ ?” She’s not seven years old anymore. It’s not like she needs to keep playing like her stupid old stuffed animal is a  _ him _ and not an  _ it _ . 

Cat says nothing, just stares back at her with those freaky yellow eyes. 

“Okay,” Illyana says, trying not to think about how much of the creature in front of her is still the woman who was her best friend. “Well, thanks.” She shuffles away, clutching Fozzie Bear close. 

The good news is, she doesn’t need magic to fix Fozzie Bear. There’s a drawer in her bedside table with some odds and ends— melted-down candles, black chalk, some beads, a moldy old pincushion and a sewing kit. 

She sits down cross-legged in the middle of her bed, propping poor Fozzie Bear up in front of her. For a moment, she imagines that he is a real bear, and the white stuffing spilling out of him is intestines and organs, drenched in sticky blood and bile, dripping across her bedspread like some arcane sacrifice. 

She acknowledges the thought, lets it flit away. This is just a stuffed bear, and his stuffing is only stuffing. Sorting through the small collection of thread in the sewing kit, she selects the brown one and feeds it through the eye of the needle. 

Her mother was the one who taught her to sew, though not intentionally. Illyana used to sit by the fireplace and watch her mother darning Piotr’s socks, and sewing patches over the knees of Illyana’s trousers. 

Even as a child, she was fast at picking up skills just by watching others. Maybe that’s why she’s such a quick study when it comes to magic. It’s not corrupting her, it’s just another skill. Like Kitty and her computers. 

The needle darts through and under and over, quick, and she nudges the stuffing back inside where it belongs, sewing up Fozzie Bear with all the seriousness of a surgeon. 

Belasco has been teaching her how to destroy, how to bring about chaos and ruin. In all his lessons, in every book in his library, she is learning how to take things apart. 

It feels good to fix something for once.

Once Fozzie Bear is all stitched up, looking not quite good as new, but still good, Illyana tucks him into bed beside her. That night, for the first time in a long time, she sleeps without nightmares. 


End file.
